April 30–May 4: VIX, votes, data and ultimata

Partisans are pitted, while clock ticks for RIM, Nokia, Yahoo, Spain

With Americans’ perceptions of seemingly every news event determinedly divergent these days, it’s as if Uncle Sam’s been fitted with a dysfunctional pair of glasses — bifocals, naturally.

Surely not, one might ask hopefully, the drama surrounding the heroic escape from house arrest to the U.S. Embassy by a noted Chinese dissident? Oh, yes, especially with Secretary of State Clinton and Treasury Secretary Geithner in Beijing this week. The first anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death? That, too, couldn’t but occasion a partisan mud toss. The Labor Department’s nonfarm-payrolls report? Post-office closures? Fed monetary policy? The Fed’s very existence? Really, need you ask?

At 11:35 p.m. Eastern time Saturday, the moon officially becomes full and will also arrive at its perigee — its closest point to Earth.

About the only thing that didn’t become a political football this week was an orb of a different sort: the celestial spectacle of a perigee moon. Then again, maybe the “supermoon” due this weekend is itself to blame for all the previously mentioned lunacy. The Tell: Lunar investing theories and the perigee moon.

On the week — the market’s worst of the year — the Nasdaq Composite
COMP, -0.94%
paced losses, declining 3.7%, while the blue-chip Dow industrials
DJIA, -1.11%
and the S&P 500
SPX, -0.88%
retreated 1.4% and 2.4%, respectively.

All bets are off: It's an election year

(1:05)

Wall Street is consumed by the phenomenon of "sell in May and go away" because it's worked so well the past two years. But this year is an election year, and that means all bets are off, since stocks typically rise in the six to seven months preceding a U.S. presidential election.

Worried about how political uncertainty will impact the stock market in this election year? Your concern is understandable, writes Mark Hulbert. Not only is there the presidential election in the U.S. but a number of elections in Europe as well that — if you believe the headlines — could rattle the investment markets. Uncertainty surrounding the presidential election in France, for example, has already been widely cited as a contributing factor in a rumored downgrade of the country’s debt, just as the toxic U.S. political climate was cited in last summer’s U.S. credit-rating cut. But don’t get carried away, writes Hulbert, looking to market history and identifying no demonstrable relationship between volatility and election years. See Trading Strategies column by Mark Hulbert: The VIX in presidential election years.

Payrolls report leaves investors cold

The U.S. economy created just 115,000 jobs in April as hiring slackened for a second straight month, according to government employment figures. The unemployment rate edged down to 8.1% from 8.2%, but it fell because more people stopped looking for work. Some 342,000 people dropped out of the labor force to mark the second decline in a row, the Labor Department said. See full story on the U.S. nonfarm-payrolls report for April.

James Bianco, who advises institutional investors, says emerging markets remain the best bet in global investing at time when Europe and China are facing stubborn uncertainty. Interview with MarketWatch's Jonathan Burton in San Francisco.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. Intraday data
delayed per exchange requirements. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM) from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real time last sale data provided by NASDAQ. More
information on NASDAQ traded symbols and their current financial status. Intraday
data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM)
from Dow Jones & Company, Inc. SEHK intraday data is provided by SIX Financial Information and is
at least 60-minutes delayed. All quotes are in local exchange time.